This is to inform you that we have had to withdraw the Audience Award.

There have inadvertently been some misinterpretations of the voting procedures which had been sent to nominees in April. We believe that this may have led to some unfairness between the nominees, which could have adversely affected the overall integrity of the vote. For this reason we have unfortunately decided that we have no choice but to withdraw the Listeners' Award for this year.

We know that this will be a disappointment and we are very sorry that we have had to take this course of action.

Initially, I wasn't going to post on this thread but I can't stop thinking that
maybe the reason the Club Global winners, Transglobal Underground are not performing at the BBC 3 Awards for World Music winners concert, is perhaps some kind of censorship.

Please tell me I am wrong , I can't help thinking that Radio 3's decision to broadcast the concert as part of their Proms season, is influencing who plays on the night, in order to satisfy a listener demographic. Are they scared that the proms audience wouldn't appreciate TGU ?

........ I was at a recent Toumani Diabate concert in Manchester and I was really surprised by the audience demographic, which was predominantly white and over 55. Is this the demographic for "world music" ?

The night before I had djayed at the CND / Amnesty, Drop Beats not Bombs in Birmingham, playing a very roots based global music set. It was somewhat out of place amongst the urban, broken beats and electro sets of the other djays and I did question myself ! However, interestingly a number of the young djays wanted to know more about what the music was, where it came from, what the instruments were and importantly where they could hear more of it.

We need to mix up the more classical and traditional forms of "world music" . By doing this our "clubbers" will get turned onto more traditional forms of music and hopefully start exploring the vast musical world out there and our listeners with a more classical background, will hopefully enjoy a good dance knowing where the roots of the dance music come from.

Why have a winners concert where only some categories are represented.

mike gavin wrote:Erm, what does 'inadvertently been some misinterpretations of these procedures' mean - is this BBC for cheating?

It basically means, and I don't think this is spilling too many beans, that all nominees were told they could have no paid promotion of the possibility of voting for them, to keep a level playing field. Some artists' record companies nevertheless sent around emails to fan bases flagging it up, since they genuinely thought that would be OK. But since this could be interpreted as paid promotion as the PR doing it is presumably paid, whereas they'd assumed it only applied to taking out paid adverts etc, there was the possibilty of results being challenged.

I think most of the Club Global stuff is little more than a token gesture to the more 'hip' cats out there to attract the yoof. The actual music strikes me as just an exotic-tinged bolt-on to a normal dance thang. But there again I'm a grumpy old bloke.

I must admit by being turned off by too many white people in bands that are billed as 'African'. Rachid Taha's, Tony Allen's and Amadou and Mariam's band spring to mind. If I want to see a load of white blokes from London rather than Africans from Bamako I can see them any day.

And if Thomas Brooman was responsible for booking so many white acts at Womad then surely it's a good thing he's gone?

Surely Amadou & Mariam are entitled to hire/play with whoever they choose? For my own prt, I can't say that it would bother me at all where the musicians come from, provided they can cut the mustard musically.

Rob Hall wrote:Surely Amadou & Mariam are entitled to hire/play with whoever they choose? For my own prt, I can't say that it would bother me at all where the musicians come from, provided they can cut the mustard musically.

As Adam Blake and Justin Adams have proved, ethnicity is no automatic guide to musical worth. (*)

But, after seeing Amadou & Mariam perhaps as many as ten times, I began to resent how formulaic their accompaniment was, and wished I could hear them with musicans who were not Paris session men. On the DVD made soon after the release of Dimanche a Bamako, there is footage of the duo playing in Bamako itself with a group of Malian musicians. The difference is remarkable - there's danger, improvisation, laughter, challenge.

A variety of practical barriers made it impossible for that African band to be available for all the European work, from the increasing paperwork involved in obtaining visas for the musicians to the the costs of keeping them in Europe during the periods between gigs and tours.

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(*) Before anyone should run away with the notion that all you need to be an acceptable white musician is for Adam to be part of your name, consider Bryan

It was my understanding that WOMAD was always to be an East/West (North/South) meeting place for global musicians to perform and possibly play together. I might be wrong but I think not. It was always a good mixture right from the start with many bands "from the West" like Echo and The Bunnymen, The Beat, The Pogues, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, New Order, The Fall entering gladly into the spirit of the event. The first WOMAD collaboration being the Drummers of Burundi and The Bunnymen in 1982 at Pete De Freitas's (Bunnymen drummie) suggestion.

Of course, with world music being unborn as a category in the early days, having names like Peter Gabriel and Simple Minds on the bill helped bring the project to wider attention. People were perhaps a little more open minded and eclectic in their tastes in the post punk days too. World music on the front page of the NME, UK bands like 23 Skidoo, Pigbag, and Rip Rig and Panic taking on esoteric influences. Not to mention Talking Heads in America.....

All of these people helped in some small or big way to create momentum and interest. Of course musicians from Africa and Asia and elsewhere had appeared in Britain before at the South Bank, at Commonwealth celebrations, in community halls at Southall or Handsworth and at weddings and barmitzvahs but rarely to a "pop audience" (and let's take popular in its literal sense) in the days when we were young.